Pack info

A collection of synthetic explosion sounds.

This collection is primarily comprised of two series, one [using names that start with "ExplosionBombBlastAmbient"] being a variety of explosion sounds with environmental reverberation (outdoors), the other [names starting with "ExplosionBombBlastDistantMuffled_LikeCinematicBoom"] being deep thuds as though filtered by great distance. There are a few other sounds that are placed here as well, just because they seem to fit the bill. All of these sounds are totally synthetic, created within Cool Edit Pro (the ancestor of modern-day Adobe Audition).

The first sounds uploaded to the "Ambient" series have a drawback, though highly reviewed and used in many applications: I had apparently applied a final distortion effect to them without critical listening and I failed to realize I had created sporadic high-frequency noise that lowers their quality. That applies to the "Ambient" sounds up through number 7. Since then, I have created more to extend the series, numbered 8, 9, A, B, C, and D. I may even add more later. These newer (higher-numbered) sounds are more professional in quality and have mostly avoided such glitches. They tend to share very long reverberant tails, but if you don't need those, you can adjust your own envelopes or apply repeated "fade out" effects (whatever you have available) to get them to last an appropriate amount of time. I figure this is better than giving you something too short, because it isn't obvious how to get the layered, spacious sound of an extended tail even when using decent reverb effects.

Note that none of these explosion sounds include convincing "debris" noise. I've pondered how to provide that for some time, and generally I'm not sure it makes any sense to do so because every conceivable application will have different-sounding debris: the type, quantity, spread, etc. It turns out that the aforementioned distortion artifacts in sounds 1 through 7 can start out sounding like some sort of debris noise, but the similarly wanes toward the ends of the reverberant tails. I also think it could be useful to throw in some metallic warpage -- the moaning shrieks of forcefully bending large metal structures in a short period of time -- but it isn't clear to me that any particular application of that would be any more universally useful than having some form of "debris" noise. So I haven't taken on that challenge.

The other series ("DistantMuffled_LikeCinematicBoom") are intended to be potential alternatives to HerbertBoland's popular CinematicBoomNorm.wav sample, consisting primarily of very low frequencies. However, a more systematic approach to that same idea can be found in my "thuds" pack: http://www.freesound.org/packsViewSingle.php?id=7658.